Death penalty darkens Fla.'s golden image

Florida, the Sunshine State, known for its orange groves, deluxe retirement communities and Disney World, seeks another, darker distinction: Death penalty capital of the United States.

Florida, the Sunshine State, known for its orange groves, deluxe retirement communities and Disney World, seeks another, darker distinction: Death penalty capital of the United States.

The Florida Legislature is mulling a bill that would speed up executions for death row inmates by requiring the state to execute a condemned prisoner within 180 days of a warrant being signed.

Wisely, 18 states have abandoned capital punishment (Pennsylvania, sadly, is not among them), recognizing that the risk of putting to death an innocent person outweighs any perverse satisfaction in putting to death a guilty one. They've also recognized the long-standing disparity in meting out sentences that send a disproportionate share of poor and minority inmates to death row.

But Florida? Bill proponents argue that limiting the post-conviction period eliminates the current situation in which inmates can remain on death row for years on end. They also want to offer "closure" to victims' families. But that seemingly protracted period, which in Florida averages 13 years, also affords inmates an opportunity to exonerate themselves. The process of obtaining a DNA test, which sometimes implicates an entirely different person in a crime, can take years.

No state in this otherwise modern nation should still condone, much less carry out, the death penalty. Around the world, most countries have halted the practice. Among those who retain it are Iran, Iraq, North Korea (remember "the axis of evil"?), Afghanistan and Nigeria, to name a few.

If Florida's legislators don't care about the company they keep they should at least look at their own statistics. For a period, Florida had stopped executing prisoners, but resumed the death penalty in the 1970s. Since then, 24 death row inmates have been exonerated. What if they'd fallen under the 180-day rule? Twenty-four innocents dead at the hands of the state.

If the moral argument fails to persuade, there's a fiscal one. A Palm Beach Post study found that death penalty cases in Florida cost far more than standard-fare murder prosecutions, with the death penalty requiring state government $51 million more a year than it would spend if prosecutors sought a sentence of life without parole instead. Of course, shortening the waiting period to 180 days would save money. But surely that's not legislators' motive, is it?

Enlightened people the world over understand that there is no margin for error when it comes to the ultimate punishment. Florida's legislators should reach the same conclusion before another innocent person is put to death.